BY PETER SULLIVAN

The Hill

The United States has reached 1 million reported deaths from COVID-19, according to figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a number that shows the shocking toll the virus has taken on the nation.  

The U.S. has had more deaths per capita than Western Europe or Canada, and while new deaths have fallen, the total death count is still rising.

It is also expected that the United States, like other countries, has undercounted the true number of deaths from the coronavirus.

Illustrating how high 1 million deaths originally seemed, then-President Trump said in March 2020 that holding the country to between 100,000 and 200,000 deaths would mean “we all, together, have done a very good job.” 

Deaths have continued stacking up even into 2021 and 2022, after vaccines became widely available, disproportionately among people who did not get vaccinated or did not get booster shots.  

An analysis from the Peterson Center on Healthcare and the Kaiser Family Foundation found that about 234,000 U.S. COVID-19 deaths, or roughly one quarter of the total, could have been prevented if people had been vaccinated. 

The share is even higher, at 60 percent, of deaths since vaccines became widely available in June 2021.  Read more…